One means of widening our circle of understanding is by listening to the radio.

This afternoon on Radio 4 (Ramblings - to be repeated early Saturday morning, and also available via iPlayer) former poet laureate Andrew Motion revisited the village in Essex where he was raised and where he was first inspired to write poetry.

The programme is well worth a listen, particularly when he references John Keats in his desire for “doing good in the world” and speaks of his aims of finding a sense of balance in life and in work, and of making things of lasting beauty.

And it’s also worthwhile taking a listen to the poets reading on the Poetry Archive (www.poetryarchive.org) that Sir Andrew was instrumental in creating while he was poet laureate.

“The ear is the best reader”, to quote Robert Frost.

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Continuing with the theme of spring, this is a sonnet by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

Work without Hope

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

Anyone for Hope?

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“Winter slumbering in the open air
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring”

to quote both the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (see above) and the actor Bill Murray (lines repeated in “Groundhog Day”, the film set again and again on February 2nd).

Time does move on, even if this week has appeared in England to have seen a return to winter. It is April, the time written of in the opening stanza of Robert Browning’s

Home Thoughts from Abroad

Oh, to be in England now that April ’s there
And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

We are in the season of tiny leaf and endless possibility.

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In the parish church of Stratford upon Avon 448 years ago today a new-born child was baptised William.

The rest is English literature, for if it is true - as Alfred North Whitehead remarked - that western philosophy is a set of footnotes to Plato, then it can equally well be asserted that the development of English drama, poetry and prose since that day and that life has been a set of commentaries on and conversations with the works of William Shakespeare.

To misquote Samuel Johnson, when a human being is tired of Shakespeare, they are tired of life.

Last edited by Alan Edward Roberts on Thu May 31, 2012 4:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

Within the setting of the School of Economic Science, London, there is an opportunity to Discover Poetry as part of a group for nine Saturday mornings over the summer term - from 11.15am to 12.30pm at Mandeville Place, with the first session on May 12th.

Poetry still needs to be spoken; poetry still needs to be heard; the first session of Discovering Poetry is still this coming Saturday (May 12th) from 11.15am to 12.30pm.

In the meantime, if April is the month in which England remembers its national bard, then May is a month that is readily associated with another English poet, whom Lord Byron considered “the most faultless of poets, and almost of men” and “the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence”.

The Victorian critic John Ruskin said of the same poet, who was born on May 21st 1688 and died on May 30th 1744 that he was “the most perfect representative we have, since Chaucer, of the true English mind”; not everyone agrees.

More on the same topic next week.

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May 15th, noted last week as the publication day of Essay on Criticism, also marks the death (in 1886) of Emily Dickinson.
For those who know of her, and those who do not, here is one of her most delightfully playful poems ...

[260]

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

and here another ...

[466]

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Two paradisal poems: other work by the same writer can by found under the thread “Vera Korfioti - poems from Cyprus” ...

A Moment in Time

Coming out of the sea in the morning
have you ever noticed
a bird softly alighting on the sand
airily elegant
one cannot find another like it
all of time stops
and condenses itself
in that moment

Strive

It is not sufficient
to write verses
skilfully

it is not sufficient
to chisel gentle
beautiful or bitter
feelings
to infuse significant meanings
universal messages and then adorn them
with all that you were initiated
in the skilful art of verse making
fanciful finds

Do not stop there
But
with all your courage
transubstantiate
a little poetry into life
strive

This is a poem by George Herbert (1593-1633) that carries forward the link between life, the soul and virtue described in Vera Korfioti’s poem Strive (see immediately above) and hints, musically, at the sweetness of an eternal unity:

Virtue

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season ...”

Last edited by Alan Edward Roberts on Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:52 am; edited 1 time in total

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:18 am Post subject: “I am a part of all that I have met ...”

From Ulysses ... a section of the (iambic-pentameter) dramatic-monologue by Alfred Tennyson:

“I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.”

Last edited by Alan Edward Roberts on Thu Mar 14, 2013 1:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

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